New pool for 2012! Totally different. Pick 12 news headlines that you made up yourself. 12 news headlines that you predict will be seen in 2012. Whoever does the best job of predicting the events of 2012 will win the pool.

How to enter: The competition will take place on this thread. Going by your DL name, no guests allowed. Clearly number and distinguish the 12 headlines. Use proper grammar. A headline cannot exceed 12 words. Deadline for headlines... is January 19(the day of my first DDP casualty...)

Scoring: You will be awarded points for each word that matches up between your predicted headline and the real-life headline. The number of points for a word depends on how many letters are in that word. (example: "is" is worth 2 points, "earthquake" is worth 10 points.) YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR POSTING THE REAL-LIFE HEADLINES. It is up to you to decide what real-life headline you want to settle for. When posting your headline to the thread for your point reward, include the link of the internet news source where the headline is and the number that corresponds to the headline on your predictions list. After submitting, that headline of yours will be crossed off the master list, and you will not be able to submit a match for that headline again. The news headline will be invalid if the article is January 19 or older.

Bonuses!: If you include a number in your headline and it matches a number in the real-life headline, you will be rewarded a points bonus of the sum of the number's digits. (example: In the headline "27 Belgian partiers die in apartment collapse" you would get 9 points (2+7) for guessing 27 Belgian partiers.) The number must describe something tangible to get the added bonus. No bonus points for "Etta James dies at 73". And please.. lets try not to make too many celebrity death headlines. Im trying to make this fun...

Acceptable News Sources:

LIST GONE. Any major professional online news source is acceptable. No local news. No blogs.

Your Host: I am going to be graduating high school in a few months. Im thinking about disconnecting from this awful, compulsive, electronic American culture when its all over. Not necessarily leaving America, but getting away from the hypnosis of TV and computers. So that would require me to part from the deathpool community. In that case, I'll either just end the competition right there or hand it off to someone else to take care of.

If my mind went blank at some point in writing this and forgot to mention an important detail, let me know and I will address it after this statement in this first post. You can also suggest more news sources to me during submission time.

You cannot play a headline that speculates an event we already know is coming. Such as "Little Sasha Obama celebrates 11th birthday"

I applaud your desire to retreat from modern electronic culture. You may find it difficult to do it and still remain employed but you should look for small ways to do so on your own time (don't watch TV, refrain from "smart phones", etc.) I suggest you also look into meditation, exercise, eating non-processed food and reading classics. Oh, yes and my headline is "Man Bites Dog". Best of luck 93.

You get points for each word that matches the headlines, so if youre trying to catch points, you'll wanna use adjectives, full names and all that. A strategy like that will raise your chances of matching words and scoring.

Because scoring depends on the words.. NO MERCY FOR MISSPELLED WORDS! I see some up there right now. Unless you find a misspelled news article..

And keep all your headlines on one post.

And i dont see many utilizing the number bonus..

And Im changing one thing about the numbers. Spelled out numbers WILL be equivalent to digit numbers.To Handrejka, I'll likely just hand it off to anyone who wants to take over if I dont have internet access this summer. One person could take over, or multiple people could watch the scoreboard. So dont feel like you cant include Olympic headlines.

I havent recorded any entries yet, so may edit your entries for now. I may record whatever full entries are up on Monday.

On the other hand they're not greatly given to reading small print, greatly cognisant of the array of convoluted opinions all of which see them as willing victims of their self-engineered failure or - apparently - possessed of a willingness to directly engage a situation that means those reading this sentence are likely to enjoy greater life chances than those on Jeremy Kyle's show.

Maryport is a disappointment for which there is no cure, but the annual Deathrace thread hereabouts provides welcome distraction.